Elephant & Castle residents & community latest update & perpective June 2013

Dear Friend,

Please find below our latest update on the Elephant & Castle Regeneration.

Kind regards,

35% Campaign

http://35percent.org/blog/2013/06/08/the-heygate-diaspora/

The Heygate Diaspora

JUN 8TH, 2013

“There is a huge silent majority of people that have been moved out of the Heygate that are happy in their new homes.”

Cllr Fiona Colley Cabinet Member for Regeneration

“I could no longer afford to stay in the area and, in the end, the offer I was made plus £45,000 of my life savings bought me a terraced property 15 miles out of London. I have, I feel, given up my home to accommodate the building of homes for overseas investors.”

Terry Redpath Former Heygate Leaseholder

Property Week Magazine - 17/05/13

In our last blog post we corrected some of the more fanciful claims that council leader Peter John made about the rehousing of Heygate tenants. We showed that only 45 Heygate tenants have actually been rehoused in new homes. We now also know that only around 1 in 5 Heygate secure tenants actually remain in the SE17 postcode (216 tenants out of 1034). This information comes from a response to an FOI request.

While we know what has happened to the secure tenants, Southwark can supply no information about where the 438 insecure tenants were rehoused. These are tenants who had moved onto the estate since Jan 2001, when Southwark stopped issuing proper council secure tenancies, and started using the estate for temporary accommodation. Such insecure tenants had no right at all to a new property out of the regeneration. Those who were eligible for council housing, will in most cases have been moved into existing council stock throughout the borough.

We are still gathering information about leaseholders. What we know so far is that they have moved furthest of all residents, as the following illustration shows:

Heygate Leaseholder Displacement Map (using data submitted by Southwark Council at the Feb 2013 Heygate CPO Public Inquiry)

Around half have relocated to SE postcodes (including Woolwich, Thamesmead and Welling), most of the rest have had to move to suburbs such as Sidcup, St. Albans, Chelmsford, Croydon, Bexleyheath, Ilford, Romford, Dartford, Cheshunt, Mitcham and West Thurrock. The reason for this is clear: the very low levels of compensation leaseholders have received for their Heygate homes. This link has a full list of the amounts paid to Heygate leaseholders. It is compiled from information received through Freedom of Information requests, and includes an indexed column showing today’s value of the settlements.

The average compensation paid for a 1 bed flat is £108,164 (indexed to today’s value). Owners of 2 bed flats received on average £122,140, 3 bed maisonettes £185,070 and 4 bed maisonettes £209,440. Some homeowners got particularly poor deals: one leaseholder received just £32,000 for a 1 bed flat in 2008.

Compare this to the cost of the new Heygate homes as advertised by Lend Lease. These start at £330k for a 1 Bed flat, £455k for a 2 Bed flat and £590k for a 3 Bed - (www.trafalgarplace.com)

All in all not many residents - whether a secure tenant, an insecure tenant or a leaseholder - will get either a new home or a home at the Elephant through the regeneration.

Bedroom Tax and benefit cap everything you need to be aware about this madnes.

You thought the bedroom tax was bad! The much worse benefit cap starts in 4 weeks!!

A maximum of £500 per week in total or overall benefit payments sounds a lot.  It is a lot.  Yet this overall benefit cap won’t save the public purse money at all, in factit will cost much more and as much as £1 BILLION per year more and the policy should be abandoned for the sake of the country’s finances!
In 4 short weeks time this overall benefit cap begins and this is not only bad for tenants and housing like the bedroom tax it will cost the taxpayer more.  It is a stupid and reckless policy based on political dogma with no economic rationale at all.
First to note is that we already have a national welfare benefit cap.  JSA is £71.70 wherever you live.  The overall benefit cap includes Housing Benefit however and rents vary dramatically across the country and so the overall benefit cap is a policy to reduce Housing Benefit, and indeed that is how it will work.
Second to note is how it operates.  The £500 per week is the starting point from which welfare benefits are deducted and this leaves a maximum amount of benefit which becomes the maximum housing benefit to be paid. So if a family gets £300 per week in welfare benefits the maximum it can receive is £200 per week in housing benefit. The table below shows how much welfare benefits a family receive and also how much they will be left towards their rent.
Thirdly, the DWP has sent letters out to 88,840 families between May and October 2012 stating they will get hit by the overall benefit cap.  The same DWP state the average reduction in weekly benefit is £93 per week at 2012 figures.  The bedroom tax average by comparison is £14 per week.  The benefit cap thus presents a seven times greater likelihood of non-payment of rent and a seven times higher risk of the tenant being evicted and becoming a homeless family.  In fact homelessness through eviction for arrears is inevitable with the overall benefit cap whether the tenant family lives in social housing or private housing.
Fourthly, the DWP say 46% of these families hit by the overall benefit cap (OBC) live in social housing so about 41,000 live in council or housing association properties and 48,000 live in the private rented sector or PRS. This is not a high private rent issue that only affects London!
The OBC will have a devastating impact and a far greater one for the tenant, for the landlord and for the taxpayer than the bedroom tax.  It will see far more evictions for arrears and will see a huge increase in families made homeless and these families will in turn create a huge taxpayer and public purse cost for the homelessness the OBC creates. 
The general public who have been so outspoken against the bedroom tax policy which has seen this remain in the news month after month know little about the OBC and its impacts and I begin to address the impacts here. 
As I state above we already have a national welfare benefit cap and the amount of welfare benefit a family receives is the same national and depends on thee make up of the family.  Table 1 below shows these amounts and also shows how much the OBC leaves to pay for rent through Housing Benefit (HB) in social housing or through Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for a private tenant.
Table 1 – Welfare Benefits and HB/LHA under the overall benefit cap

Family composition	Welfare Benefits	Max HB/LHA payable
1 parent and 2 children – 1P2C	£220.50	£279.80
2 parent and 2 children – 2P2C	£261.35	£238.65
1 parent and 3 children – 1P3C	£286.20	£213.80
2 parent and 3 children – 2P3C	£327.05	£172.95
1 parent and 4 children – 1P4C	£351.91	£148.09
2 parent and 4 children – 2P4C	£392.76	£107.24
1 parent and 5 children – 1P5C	£417.62	£82.38
2 parent and 5 children – 2P5C	£458.47	£41.53
1 parent and 6 children – 1P6C	£483.33	£16.77
2 parent and 6 children – 2P6C	£524.18	NOTHING

1P2C household – A single parent with 2 children will have a maximum payment of £279.80 per week towards rent.  More than enough to cover rent in the vast majority of the country.  Yet if this household sees a mum and a teenage boy and girl in London living in a 3 bed flat with a typical weekly rent of £350 per week plus with a private landlord can they afford to find over £70 per week from welfare benefit to make up the shortfall in rent?  The obvious answer is no so they will be evicted for arrears and the local council will then have to place then in temporary accommodation costing £600 – £3000 per week.
The same will apply for any larger family and so we see that a family with 2 children or more living in a PRS property in London will be evicted for arrears and cost the taxpayer so much more. 
It also has the following general impacts: -

• A family on welfare benefits will not be able to afford a private rented property in the capital and so PRS landlords will not accommodate a family on welfare benefits. 
• As PRS landlords will not accommodate these families will either have to leave London and/or increased demand on social housing there. 
• If such a family is accommodated in high cost temporary homeless accommodation by a London council then they can only leave there to go to social housing in the capital

Also note well that the OBC creates a very perverse incentive to family life.  If you are a 2 parent household it is better in financial terms to ditch your spouse or partner as you then receive £41 per week less in welfare benefits yet a £41 per week better chance of keeping the roof over the head of you and your children!
Outside of London and in the PRS we see that the 2 parent and 3 child family will only receive a maximum of £172.95 per week or just under £750 per calendar month to pay towards rent.  The national average 3 bed PRS rent level is closer to £800 per month and the average 4 bed PRS rent level is £309 per week or £1340 per calendar month. Even a low-rent area such as Liverpool has an average 4 bed PRS rent level of £235 per week according to 2012 official VOA figures.  Can such a family afford a £61 per week rent shortfall?  The answer is no the 2P3C family cannot afford this figure which is over four times the average bedroom tax shortfall in Liverpool.
A general point is that PRS landlords can evict quickly and without any reason and a judge has no discretion in this.  So with an average shortfall of £93 per week nationally then a very high percentage of the 48,000 PRS families affected will be evicted for arrears and fall on the local council to place in temporary accommodation – at a hugely increased cost to the public purse.  Note too that  before the OBC commences we have about 53,000 homeless families nationally so the homeless figures will double with the benefit cap.  These families currently cost about £500m per year to the public purse and the OBC is expected to save £270m per year.  Go figure!!
Yet these numbers and huge public purse costs have yet to consider the social tenant affected and almost 41,000 have been given letters by the DWP to say they will be affected.  The same will happen to them as I outline will happen to the PRS tenants above which will add to the homeless numbers and to the public purse cost.  The ONLY difference is that it will be larger sized families.
Take the couple with 5 children (2P5C) who in just 4 weeks time will receive a maximum of £41.53 in Housing Benefit per week.  A 4 bed SRS property will have a rent level of £110+ even in a low rent area such as Liverpool.  Will such a family be able to find £70 per week or over £300 per month from their welfare benefits to make up the rent shortfall?  Of course not and so they will also be evicted and quickly by a social landlord.  They then add to the homelessness numbers and to the burgeoning public purse cost.
Yet there is one hugely significant additional consequence here with the ‘large’ family – Where the hell are they going to live?
To explain if the ‘large’ family in the cheapest form of rented housing cannot afford to live in the cheapest rented housing then they will remain in temporary costly homeless accommodation permanently!  There is nowhere for them to go as the council cannot place them in a council house as the same series of events, from arrears to eviction to homelessness, happens again.  So where the hell are such families to live? 
The options they have are stay in unsuitably temporary accommodation with all their children or (a) one parent gets a 30 hour per week job on the minimum wage or (b) the 2 parent 5 child family splits up into to households of 1P3C and 1P2C.
The latter point is yet another perverse incentive of the OBC.  If a large family household splits to form two smaller ones then they can avoid the cap. 
Logically a council would rehouse them in two 3 bed properties next door to one another and so avoid the much higher temporary homeless cost.  Yet of course no council could advise a family to split up and even if this happens we see a doubling of the HB claims as they are now on 2 properties whereas before they were on one.  The public purse cost increases yet again!!
The former and only viable solution according to the coalition is for one of the parents to take on a job and that is a key ‘nudge’ of the policy to change the behaviour of the benefit claimant.  A low paid job would see receipt of working tax credit that exempts them from the OBC.
Take the 2 parent 5 child household as an example.  Instead of having their overall benefits capped at £500 one of the parents takes a 30 hour per week job at £6.40 per hour (£192 per week gross) and they receive £524.09 in benefits plus the £184.66 wages for a total of £708.75 per week.  This is based on a rent of £120 per week and so previously this 2P5C family would have received £678.47 per week made up of £458.47 in welfare benefits and £120 per week in Housing Benefit. So they are £30.28 per week better off.  However, working they have to pay £8.11 per week in Council Tax whereas before they paid £2.12 and so they are better off by £25.29 per week…for working 30 hours!
If the travel to and other work costs exceeds £25.29 per week or just over £5 per day then the family is worse off financially and one partner is working 30 hours per week in a mundane job simply to stay in their accommodation, their family home.
I suspect not many families will see this as an incentive!!! 
Of course the last possibility is that one of the parents finds a job paying £53,000 per year gross which will see the family break even with their benefit payments of £678.47 per week plus £10 per day for work costs…not the jobs which grow on trees! Then again if by some miracle such a family found a job paying £53k per annum then Tory run Hammersmith & Fulham (zealous adherents of welfare reform who don’t think Coalition goes far enough) is proposing to charge more rent to social tenants earning over £40,200 per year and so such families would be worse off financially by getting such a job at this £53k salary.  These families would then likely be evicted for rent arrears for taking a £53k per year job!!  Yes reader this clearly is thought through and the Hammersmith & Fulham policy is called pay to stay (more correctly pay MORE to stay) and came from…yes you’ve guessed it ….the coalition who first mooted this 18 months ago and who want to introduce this as yet another of their hare-brained housing policies on a national scale!!
So in summary the overall benefit cap will cost the public purse about £1bn more each year and this gets worse each year as rents rise by more than the benefit cap figure.  What was that reader?  You thought a benefit cap reduced the welfare bill…Come on keep up!! Just because the coalition dream such policies up on the back of a fag packet doesn’t mean you have to have the same lazy superficial thinking!!  What about all those homeless families exported from London?  How about the more than doubling of the number of homeless families?  Numbers – well 89,000 or so families made homeless is about half a million men women and children or more than the population of say Liverpool…Yes that’s each and every year! 
You begin to get a picture of why the overall benefit cap is much worse than the bedroom tax now?  Good that’s the idea.  So all those activist techniques of keeping the horrors of the bedroom tax in the news will be honed and sharpened then?  Yes you have 4 weeks and that’s an age with social media.  You have some idea of why councils need to spend a hell of a lot more on benefit cap DHPs now than bedroom tax DHPs?  You see why councils spend a hell of a lot more DHPs on private tenants? 
What was that again?  You thought the bedroom tax was bad?  It is but nowhere near as bad as the overall benefit cap as you now see.  Perhaps all the social landlords that are so blasé about it and were all of 2012 when I wrote repeatedly the benefit cap will see more evictions than the bedroom tax and it hits landlords finances even more than it?  Worse than that is the LGA, the umbrella body for all local councils.  The huge transfer of costs the benefit cap gives from central to local government has seen a LGA response deafening in its silence.  They didn’t even pick up that local councils will have to spend at least £400m more in HB as their proportion of the added costs of coalition welfare reforms this year that is hidden away here in the Autumn Statement of 2012 and I discussed in December 2012. 
That’s £400m per year on top of the extra costs that central government will have to give local government for the higher HB costs of temporary homeless accommodation by the way – yes additional to!!
Anyone left out there with an IQ of higher than minus 12 who thinks the benefit cap will cut the welfare bill?  If so the coalition are looking for new welfare policy workers!

Convoy Wharf Question from Nicola & Micah Walters Greenwich West People before Profit to Greenwich Council

In light of Convoy Wharf Developers submitting a fresh planning application to Lewisham Council and the huge impact this will have on the residents in Greenwich West, will Greenwich Council join with us and express concern regarding:

·         The unacceptable  low level of affordable Housing, ( Just 8% )

·         Total lack of Jobs for local people ( Deptford has 55% youth unemployment)

·         The failure to address Air Quality and Congestion that will have huge negative impact on Greenwich residents and Business

·         Support our proposal that the roof spaces should be used to generate low cost Energy for local residents whilst using the Commercial space not as more Tesco Metro stores, but as a Green Business, Artistic Hub to generate long term job security and to boost the wider local economy by submitting Greenwich Concerns to Lewisham Councils Planning Committee.

PPlease could the Royal Greenwich Borough inform us of where they stand regarding these matters mentioned above.

 Thank you for your time and we hope to hear from you very soon.

 Kind Regards

Micah & Nicola Walters

Greenwich People Before Profit.
Greenwich West Campaign Team. 

You need to submit your Concerns, Objections no later than Monday 1st July 2013
to Planning@lewisham.gov.uk Reference DC/13/83358 Convoy wharf.

People Before Profits Concerns on Jobs Housing and Environment impact as well as Historical importance of site will be on this blog from Monday after we have submitted our Improvements, Objections and concerns to Lewisham Council .

You can aslso if you share our Politics follow ray on twitter@Raywoolford

Hounslow food bank, my letter to Chair calling for an end to discrimination of people seeking food aid, and Cause of public anger .

Dear Mr Curran,
                      I have been surprised to hear that your Food Bank has a policy of selective donations of food, that is leading many in real need such as thous sanctioned without the emergency food they need,  and for which client base food banks exist.
I presently run 2 food banks, one covering the whole of Lewisham and the other Greenwich borough with a third to open in Southwark, our experience of dealing with people in real crises is that asking for food is extremly difficult with most clients taking up to 2 weeks from making enquiry to arriving at the food bank.
Clients increasingly are being sanctioned on very poor level of information  and i have very real concerns as to the reports that the Goverment continue to pump out that food Banks have nothing to do with welfare reforms.
Whilst i oppose the very idea that as  the 7th richest economy in the world, we have people needing food aid and that the state allows big business to pay such low wages that many are forced to seek out Food Banks i do what i do for the community i serve, i do not select, or further demonise the poor for any issues they may have due to the financial crises they find themselfs in.
A Selective policy of discrimination against one group of people over another already at the lowest point over food allocation i find shocking and obscene.
I would urge you to review this position, or take the time to visit our Food Bank, meet the people who are using our service and think again.

People seeking out and being brave in asking for help, should not in my view be then vetted or rated as to if or when you will give them food, most people will be truly offended by the Hounslow Food Bank policy, and i find it at odds with the fact Hounslow food bank is run by a Labour Council

Yours

Ray Woolford

We Care Food Banks.

Hounslows response;

Thank you for your email, I note your comments, we are reviewing our criteria.  
It is a pity that all the people who have taken the time to email, blog or 
telephone to criticize/condemn, not one of them has volunteered to help in any 
way.  In Hounslow we will continue to do the best for the most vulnerable in our 
community, I am very proud of the record of this Labour administration in 
Hounslow which has protected front line services to the most vulnerable despite 
a 60 million pound cut in our budget by the Tory led coalition government.  I am 
sorry that you think providing food to the needy in Hounslow is shocking and 
obscene, I can assure you that the many residents who receive food aid do not 
share your view.  In a perfect world Hounslow Council would open up its own 
supermarket and give free food to anyone in need.


Regards
Councillor Steve Curran, Labour Party Syon Ward
Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration & Planning

Hounslow foodbank rejects undeserving poor

By JAMES BLOODWORTH | Published: JUNE 4, 2013

A new council-run foodbank in Hounslow has rules stating that they will not give food to people with “chaotic lifestyles” or those who have had their benefits sanctioned.

Hounslow Community Foodbox was recently set up in a partnership between Hounslow Council and local tenants and resident groups. It is chaired by Labour Party councillor Steve Curran.

According to its website, the foodbank was set up for people who find themselves in a financial crisis which leaves them with insufficient means to buy food.

However reading through the criteria of who is eligible for a food voucher, the site attaches a disclaimer:

“Those persons who are in constant difficulties due to chaotic lifestyleswill not qualify for a voucher.

“People do not have to be on benefits to qualify for a voucher but they must have recourse to public funds.

“Anyone who has a delay/reduction in benefits or has been refused a crisis loan which causes them to struggle to buy food should contact the Jobcentre.

“People who are under sanctions from the Jobcentre are ineligible for a voucher.”

A large number of benefit sanctions have been handed down already by Jobcentre staff who are believed to be under pressure to meet unofficial targets to reduce claims. Claimants can be sanctioned for things like missing meetings, turning down jobs and failing to attend workfare placements.

It appears that those who have had their benefits stopped for whatever reason are deemed undeserving by Hounslow Food Box. As are those with “chaotic lifestyles”, whatever that means – children out of wedlock perhaps, or spending too much on fags and booze?

If, even at the doors of some foodbanks, a distinction is now being drawn between “shirkers” and “strivers”, then we on the progressive left really do have a problem.

I contacted Hounslow Community Foodbox but have so far not received a reply.

Foodbanks have grown exponentially under the coalition (note: the Hounslow foodbank in question was not a Trussell Trust foodbank)

We Care Food Bank in South London does not issue vouchers and Feeds any local resident in need.

We Care Bank with Co Op bank' Sort code 08 92 99. Account Number 65659328 every penny raised goes to help buy Food anmd run our advice and support service.
You can Follow Ray on twitter@Raywoolford.
Email; Raymondwoolford@aol.com

Food poverty Tory MP, makes constructive points around the way food is bought and sold.

Tory MP: Food poverty is growing, food banks are not the answer

Laura Sandys says the government needs to tackle supermarket dominance and get a grip on food policy if it is to address the UK's food crisis

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Link to this audio

Food banks are not the answer to food poverty, the supermarket-dominated UK food system is not fit for purpose, and ministers need to take on more of an interventionist role if the UK is to ensure that its citizens get the food they need.

No, that's not Oxfam or George Monbiot, but an independent-minded backbench Tory MP, Laura Sandys.

Sandys set out her thoughts at a meeting in the House of Commons last night organised by the social justice charity Just Fair (see audio file above). She called for ministers to take a stronger regulatory approach to tackle rampant food inflation, to prevent consumers being ripped off, and to rebuild the UK's consumer's declining food skills.

That meant controlling food policy she said, rather than delegating it to the supermarkets. The big food retailers had promised "so-called very very cheap food", supposedly distributed efficiently to consumers. But this promise, she said, was unravelling under the pressure of soaring food prices:

In many ways over the last seven years we've had the biggest crisis to affect the food system and that is something that nobody really wants to believe, and have put their head in the sand on, and that is massive food inflation. Over the last five years, [we've seen] 29% inflation on food whereas everything else has remained more or less static.

What "cheap food" was actually delivering was excessive amounts of often nutritionally poor produce - the "buy one get 10 free" phenomenon.

In many ways the system is there to throw as much so-called cheap food onto you, and in many ways what it is doing is not delivering both the quality of food and the food that you need in the way that you need it.

So what had been going on the in the world of "cheap food" where everything is getting more expensive? Sandys effectively accused food producers of ripping off consumers. The £1 cottage pie five years on was still £1, despite 29% inflation. It looked identical, it still had the same packaging, but it wasn't the same product, she said. Although "shrinkage" was going on, producers weren't letting on to consumers:

It doesn't say 30% less meat on the side of it [the packaging]

The government, she said, had to reclaim responsibility for food policy in three areas:

Number one, absolute transparency and clarity to the consumer... Number two, we need to really re-invest in [food] skills... something which has been lapsed for many, many years... The third thing we need to do is to ensure that nutrition and nutritional food, particularly for families and young people, is [prioritized] much higher [in the] social services, the education system and the health system.

The meeting was about food poverty, in part to discuss the Walking the Breadline report published last week by Oxfam, and Church Action on Poverty. It estimated that food banks were now feeding over 500,000 a year in the UK. Sandys was clear that foodbanks would not address the growing problem of food poverty:

I totally appreciate what food banks are doing but... they are not the answer, they are merely sticky tape over a serious problem which will grow.

It's clear that in some ways Sandys is not representative of mainstream conservative attitudes to food poverty, which tend to be either sceptical that it exists in the UK, or in denial about the links between welfare reform and hunger. Coalition policy has tended to resist state-led solutions to public policy issues, preferring voluntary or "nudge" approaches, although there are signs of cross-party consensus on the threats to UKfood security.

Sandys warned that the Coalition government had two years to address the challenges of food poverty and food policy.

Hopefully, we will be able to secure a much more resillient and a much fairer food system into the future.

• Thanks to Jonny Butterworth of Just Fair for the audio file

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Universal Credit. Exclusive Goverment set to scrap Computer system/ Exclusive

After the disaster under trhe last Labour Goverment to set up a huge data base for the NHS and having wasted millions of public money it was scrapped as unfit for purpose.
One of my blog readers and a supporter of People before Profit who has been working on the data base, says Universal credit on line will not happen, and that the Goverment is looking to set up call centres to deal with applications by phone instead of computer.
Lewisham & Greenwich People Before Profit members have long campaigned against this computer system that it would cost a fortune, would fail the people most in need and was unworkable.
We are unsure how the Goverment will get out of this one, but expect them to cover back by saying. We have listerned to peoples concerns about computer access and have decided to review our proposals and make access easier via call centres.
You read it here first.
Vote/ Join  People before Profit.